Ask HN: Why are articles critical of cryptocurrencies being flagged?

11 points by cliffy 6 years ago | 8 comments

This article was on the front page just now: https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-society.html

but got flagged for some unknown reason. I can only guess because it is strongly critical of cryptocurrencies.

Is flagging just community driven? As in, if an article gets flagged enough is it automatically taken down? Or does a mod have to step in?

If a mod has to step in, then why are they censoring articles critical of cryptocurrencies?

verdverm 6 years ago |

Both mods and community can result in a dead post. (You can see them by going to your profile and changing the dropdown)

w.r.t. cryptos, I think this community is less interested in the topic than two years ago. Turns out most of the content is either bs and shilling. This community is more interested in blockchain, less so about cryptocurrencies. Technical articles or those that teach something interesting do well.

dang 6 years ago |

Mods didn't touch that submission. Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but I suppose it was a combination of (1) users who felt it wasn't a substantive article and (2) users who are fatigued by the controversy around cryptocurrency. That controversy is many years old by now, has been discussed to death, and leads to poor-quality generic discussion (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). In case it helps, articles that are favorable about cryptocurrency get an even more hostile reception, especially anything reminiscent of the crypto-hype of 8-10 years ago.

This doesn't mean that articles on the topic can't do well on HN. It just means that the bar for substantiveness is high.

louwrentius 6 years ago |

Thank you for asking. This article was a great experiment, despite it being flagged.

Because nobody could answer the question I posed in the article.

To be clear: I'm quite convinced that I was being flagged by the visitors and that's why it was removed.

chc 6 years ago |

Articles are automatically taken down after they're flagged enough. Plenty of articles critical of cryptocurrencies have been posted here. It's most likely people just thought the article was blogspam.

gt565k 6 years ago |

Maybe it got flagged because it's an abomination of an article. Did you even read the damn thing? The author has no authority to speak on the subject seeing as he does not even recognize the work many crypto projects are doing to help the unbanked and solve energy consumption (PoS vs PoW).

Crypto fills a niche, it's the cash of the internet providing an unregulated unrestricted ability to transfer value.

A number of the negative points in the article could have been said about regular fiat currency.

This article is a one sided brain fart by someone who knows nothing about the subject they are writing about.

continuational 6 years ago | |

The article brings up a lot of points, and whether they hold up to scrutiny should be dealt with in the comments, not by flagging the article.

verdverm 6 years ago | | |

The article gets flagged when the commenting becomes a flame war, much like this post is becoming with people flagging and down voting based on emotion.

Case in point why crypto doesn't belong here, too many people getting too emotionally attached to their ideas to have a civil coversation.

Please downvote and flag more things you dislike for personal reasons.

verdverm 6 years ago | |

this